The Love Canal Presaged

Dear Mamma, the great-coat has come,
whose use, and my gratitude for it, will surely cumulate
all winter long, if
the cold has not caused me to need it until now.

However, all the last fortnight
floods of rain have fallen—the farms all look like lagoons,
and even College
has turned picturesque, a sort of moated fortress,

or bastion, you might say, given
our fashion of flinging a recusant gauntlet to Progress—some
(though not you, mother)
would declare it quite the Old Testament temper.

Only this morning, for instance,
the Slade Professor delivered us one of his great Jeremiads,
truly fierce it was—
against the age and its fiendish idols, whereof

a dark illustration ensued:
a painting by Turner was lugged into Hall, apparently
one that Ruskin owned,
sturdily framed and glazed, a landscape of Leicester,

we learned, the Abbey only just
discernible across a river. We stared while Ruskin read
(Henry VIII, IV ii)
the tale of Wolsey’s death on the road to London:

At long last, with easy roads, he came to Leicester,Lodged in the abbey, where the reverent AbbotWith all his convent honorably received him;So went to bed, where eagerly his sicknessPursued him still, and three nights after thisHe gave his honors to the world again...

You may recall the lines. Myself
I did not know the phrase a little earth for charity, but here
he left off quoting
to praise the idyll Leicester had been the days

Turner painted it: “If you like,
you may go there. Not I. Not now. Nor again, although
I’ll hazard a guess ... ”
slyly raising a paintbrush ... what has it come to.

Right here, these stepping-stones across
the water have been replaced, of course, by a lovely
iron bridge...” black paint
on the glass of the picture! “ ... the color the stream

should have is supplied on the left
by the indigo-works ... ” at once that side of the stream
ran indigo “... and
on the right, by a soap factory ...” dashing in

saffron “... they mix in the middle,
like curds and whey!” working the muddy mess together
with awful relish
“... You surely see, this empty bit of heath is now

properly occupied ... ” whereat
a scarlet banner bisected the picture, developing into
roofs and a red-brick
chimney “... atmosphere made—so!” and a cloud of smoke

dismantled Turner’s sky. Whereat
the brush was thrown down, and the eyesore hauled off amid
a storm of applause
(in former years he berated empty benches),

and Ruskin turned, frowning, to face
the civilization of England! I do not yet see his purpose
in citing the lines
from Shakespeare; moreover, how he confuted all

science and geological
survey with the assistance of the college cook I have not
time nor wit to tell,
but gratefully remain, your loving son Terence

whose father will have to explain
what “a little earth for charity” meant to Ruskin
(and the Cardinal).
November, ’88
St. John’s College,
Oxford